I sometimes miss vinyl records. I had one of the first quartz speed-controlled turntables in 1979, with a digital readout, when I lived in Germany. With a floating Shure cartridge. Before every play I wiped the surface with a special record cleaner device and fluid, I forget the name, to remove any dust.

Nicest feature for me was that the turntable speed could be raised or lowered in 10ths of a percentage steps, and locked there with the quartz control. This enabled "tuning" the recording to my piano, since the pitch altered with the turntable speed. Useful because I had some sheet music and records by a company called "Music Minus One", which I believe no longer exists.

These were recordings of piano concertos that contained only the orchestral accompaniments, minus the piano. You provided that yourself. Big floor speakers sat on either side of my piano. I'd write the percentage speed adjustment I needed on the sheet music for each piece, so I merely had to select it before performing.

The results not exactly concert hall quality, needless to say, but at least a way I could play something other than solo works at home. But CDs began coming out shortly afterwards, and 4 years later I got my first player. My ex-wife got all my audiophile stuff, and I never played another vinyl record at home. Only as a radio DJ, when for a time I'd use 3 formats in the broadcast studio: vinyl records, CDs, and open-reel tape. There's another lost analog medium: magnetic open-reel tape.

Michael Fremer is probably one of the top five or so folks most knowledgeable when it comes to all analog, vinyl playback and one of the most responsible for it's resurgence.

I never left the format since I began 50 years ago with my Dual 1229, Marantz 2270 and Marantz 7s (for a short time). As I've mentioned here many times, I also do digital for background type listening, which is most of the day. On now is the 1959 Stravinsky's Firebird By Dorati and the LSO on Mercury Living Presence. True, on CD, but remastered by Wilma Cozart Fine (before she passed) who did the originals with husband Bob Fine from 1947 until the late 60s.

Vinyl is more ritualized so that's saved for the more lights-off serious listening times such as last night from about midnight to 4:00am

"There's another lost analog medium: magnetic open-reel tape."

That's still used for all-analog recording. Still the same Studer-Revox (owned by former rep. Jane Harman's husband btw) and of course Ampex.

Not too much is done with Crown these days, but that was another one that got this all started back in 1947. Crown was also bought by Sidney Harman. I owned a Crown 800 in the early 70s and a couple of DC300s over the early years. The first to drive my Dayton Wight XG8s full range electrostatics.

OMG! That includes one I had! Mozart was great for Music Minus One, long piano passages, like the in the slow middle movement of the 20th. Incredibly beautiful, and yet not technically difficult at all. But you did have to put your soul into it to make it work. I would lose myself to the sound, kinda go into a meditative state, and let my fingers play on their own.

Pearson, who passed Nov 14, 2014, founded The Absolute Sound in 1973, and was as responsible as anyone, for how extreme high end audio has become today.

Pearson's the one who took the 60s status quo from "everything sounds the same" "and if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist" philosophy of Julian Hirsch of Stereo Review to "everything sounds different" and let me explain how I hear it differently of Harry Pearson.

Gordon Holt and Stereophile were somewhere in between.

Still though, Pearson is the one who got things rolling to the point it's at today. He promulgated the philosophy of today's high end that the well trained human ear is the ultimate of test equipment you need and that we really don't know how to measure what we can clearly hear. And once you hear it and understand it, there's no going back to the Julian Hirsch way of thinking.

He's also hugely responsible for the resurgence in analog, specifically vinyl, due to the rapid increase in resolving capabilities of today's equipment so we can now easily hear the differences.

Print publications have virtually disappeared in many cases or have gotten far smaller in this digital world. Not this one. The Absolute Sound keeps getting bigger and better.

I still subscribe to both Stereophile and The Absolute Sound in print and it still 'ruins' an evening when either of them arrive. It's cover to cover.